preme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their
obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the earth; and their
priests derived some profit from the art of divination. Their unwritten
laws were rigorous and impartial: theft was punished with a tenfold
restitution; adultery, treason, and murder, with death; and no
chastisement could be inflicted too severe for the rare and inexpiable
guilt of cowardice. As the subject nations marched under the standard of
the Turks, their cavalry, both men and horses, were proudly computed
by millions; one of their effective armies consisted of four hundred
thousand soldiers, and in less than fifty years they were connected in
peace and war with the Romans, the Persians, and the Chinese. In
their northern limits, some vestige may be discovered of the form and
situation of Kamptchatka, of a people of hunters and fishermen, whose
sledges were drawn by dogs, and whose habitations were buried in the
earth. The Turks were ignorant of astronomy; but the observation taken
by some learned Chinese, with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal
camp in the latitude of forty-nine degrees, and marks their extreme
progress within three, or at least ten degrees, of the polar circle.
[27] Among their southern conquests the most splendid was that of the
Nephthalites, or white Huns, a polite and warlike people, who possessed
the commercial cities of Bochara and Samarcand, who had vanquished the
Persian monarch, and carried their victorious arms along the banks, and
perhaps to the mouth, of the Indus. On the side of the West, the Turkish
cavalry advanced to the Lake Maeotis. They passed that lake on the ice.
The khan who dwelt at the foot of Mount Altai issued his commands for
the siege of Bosphorus, [28] a city the voluntary subject of Rome, and
whose princes had formerly been the friends of Athens. [29] To the east,
the Turks invaded China, as often as the vigor of the government was
relaxed: and I am taught to read in the history of the times, that
they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp or grass; and that
the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor who repulsed these
Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of savage empire compelled
the Turkish monarch to establish three subordinate princes of his own
blood, who soon forgot their gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors
were enervated by luxury, which is always fatal except to an industrious
people; the policy of China solicite